


Seijin no Hi

by butyoumight



Category: Kamen Rider Gaim
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 19:11:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butyoumight/pseuds/butyoumight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Coming of Age Day is a Japanese holiday held annually on the second Monday of January. It is held in order to congratulate and encourage all those who have reached the age of majority over the past year, and to help them realize that they have become adults.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seijin no Hi

Really, it was supposed to be a time of celebration. Coming of age was important, after all. But mostly all Takatora could think about was how one more barrier that would have kept him from going to work for his father's company was now gone. No longer a child, the only thing keeping him away from immediate installment as an employee of Yggdrasill was his education. 

He was practically already an employee, anyway. As he moved through the building that housed the main office, random employees stopped on their way of passing him to offer him a respectful bow or at least a bob of their head. 

Nepotism. Truthfully, Takatora was disgusted by it. What good would he be? He was no scientist. What did he know about rampant reproduction and invasive species and inter-dimensional cracks? His place at the company was in name only, and he knew it, even if no one else in the entire building, in the entire _company_ , did. 

As he arrived on the top floor of the building, having taken the stairs the whole way in a feeble (and failed) attempt at clearing his head, he loosened his tie then slipped it from his neck and tucked it into his pocket. 

There was one place in this building where he had no cause for concern, or to hold himself to the standards expected of the eldest son of Chairman Kureshima.

For some people, even the barrier of having not completed their education was no longer an issue. Takatora had not even finished high school when his father introduced him to 'the man who will drive Yggdrasill's research to the greatest heights'. A man, he'd called him, and Takatora had been surprised when he found that the genius his father spoke of was just barely the same age as him. 

A strange person, this Sengoku Ryouma, with that stark white streak in his hair and his eyes that would widen at no provocation at all, as if he wasn't looking at you but at something inside of you. Or maybe, just wanting to. He spoke oddly, as if he was unaccustomed to speaking to other people at all, never mind in Japanese, which Takatora figured made sense, as Ryouma had been to eight different universities in five different countries before he returned to Japan.

Takatora didn't knock before entering Ryouma's office and laboratory. He didn't need to, Ryouma probably wouldn't hear it anyway. He was sitting with his back to the door, tapping away at one keyboard with his left hand, while his right navigated through a series of images that Takatora assumed were x-rays, or CT-scans, or some other scientific thing that he knew nothing about. 

He dispensed with a respectful greeting as well. Ryouma didn't appreciate wasted time. “You didn't come to the ceremony.”

“Hm?” Ryouma didn't even turn around, his hands didn't slow for a moment. Takatora unbuttoned his suit coat but he didn't take it off. It was unreasonably cold in Ryouma's office, and he turned around again, looking for the thermostat. 

“The Coming of Age ceremony was today. Or did you not realize that today was the fourteenth?” Takatora found the thermostat behind a chalkboard covered in scribbles that were as good as arcane to Takatora. He inched it back away from the wall to turn the heat up somewhat. 

“Ah, no, I didn't.” Ryouma responded in his typical distracted way. “Was it fun?” 

“In a manner of speaking.” Takatora chose to respond, though he knew Ryouma was only asking out of conversational convention and not actual interest. “Mitsuzane came.” He crossed back to the desk where Ryouma sat, leaning back against the corner and slipping his hands into his pockets. “You should have been there.”

“It's a mere cultural convention, Takatora. By international standards and by my own experience, I have come of age three times already, at the very least.”

“You have not.” Takatora didn't actually disbelieve him, he was just hoping that he might be able to draw Ryouma away from his work and actually look at him if he got him ensnared in debate.

“I have, in fact.” It worked, as Ryouma pressed three keys simultaneously that caused one screen to go dark, and then turned his chair to look up at Takatora with an eyebrow sharply arched. “In Scotland I would have come of age at sixteen, which is incidentally when we met. In many countries, including Russia, coming of age would have been eighteen. And at nineteen, I came of age again in the perspective of my colleagues in Korea.” 

Takatora examined his face seriously, meeting his eyes and noting how they seemed to spark and shine even though the lighting in this room was very low. He also noticed the bruise-dark smudging beneath his eyes, and the small red line in the center of his bottom lip where the cool dry winter air had caused the skin to split. “When's the last time you slept?”

“That is completely irrelevant to this conversation. Tell me, Takatora, do you feel more like an adult this evening than you did when you awoke this morning?” 

Takatora rolled his eyes. “No. I doubt I will consider myself much of an adult until I finish university.”

“Well, there you are.” Ryouma spread his hands, then very rapidly stood up from his chair, stretching up towards the ceiling. “If that is the case, I most _certainly_ came of age long before this irrelevant ceremony in the midst of winter. Your birthday is in June, Takatora.” 

“It's the principle of the thing.” 

“Who's principle?” Ryouma shot back, sitting back down and leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs at the knee and folding his hands in his lap. “Yours? Your father's? The government's?”

“You're being unnecessarily combative now,” Takatora pointed out, and Ryouma shrugged one shoulder in a weary sort of acceptance of the statement. “I asked you a question.”

“And I told you it was irrelevant. Are you just here to distract me?”

Takatora arched an eyebrow right back at him. “You know, in a few years I'm going to be your boss.”

“Don't fool yourself, Takatora. You've been my boss since I arrived here, and dare I remind you that you were still a child then while, by your own rubric, I was already an adult.” 

“We're the same age.”

“Incorrect. You are almost precisely four months older than me.” Ryouma shot him a sly grin that made Takatora sigh. 

“I'm just trying to look out for you, Ryouma. You need to sleep. Please, just answer me.”

Ryouma rolled his eyes to the ceiling. The fingers on his left hand twitched a bit, lifting and lowering again in a small wave, and Takatora knew instinctively (and frustratingly) that Ryouma was actually _counting_. “You said today was the fourteenth?” 

“Yes.” Takatora forced his voice to remain low and patient. 

“Then that would be approximately 78 hours since I last slept.”

Takatora's eyebrows furrowed as he tried to do the math quickly enough to keep the conversation relevant by Ryouma's pace. “Three and a half days?”

“Not quite. Three and a quarter.” 

Takatora's eyes rolled so hard it almost made his head ache. “Get up. Save your work.”

“Excuse me?”

“I'm taking you home to bed. I've had a long day. You've had a long _three_. We're getting some rest.” 

They met gazes again, and Takatora held it long enough that Ryouma was the first to look away. He turned his chair to his computers again, but amazingly, he began to shut everything down. 

Takatora waited patiently for him, as Ryouma finished whatever he needed to do to feel secure in the work he'd done over the past few days and then stood up.

“Do you know why I respect you, Takatora?”

Takatora blinked, a bit taken aback by this seeming non sequitur. Of course, knowing Ryouma, there was a perfectly applicable reason that he would say such a thing, and so he followed after Ryouma, remembering to grab his coat for him off the rack beside the door, as Ryouma would undoubtedly forget about it. 

They stepped into the hallway and Takatora waited for Ryouma to lock the door before he offered him the coat. “No, in fact, I don't.” 

Ryouma grinned at him again. His eyes had that manic glow that Takatora found in his heart he was beginning to see as endearing. “Because you treat me as a biological organism with needs that must be met, as opposed to the simple necessity of needing my mind, in the way your father views me.” 

He took the coat from Takatora and turned to walk away down the hall, not towards the stairwell but the elevator. Takatora considered his words thoughtfully for just a moment, and found them to be impenetrable, much like nearly everything Ryouma said.

Then he turned to follow him.


End file.
